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Triple La Niña | Earth Wise

January 16, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

La Niña is an oceanic phenomenon consisting of cooler than normal sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropic Pacific.  It is essentially the opposite of the better-known El Niño.   These sea-surface phenomena affect weather across the globe.  As one oceanographer put it:  when the Pacific speaks, the whole world listens.

There is currently a La Niña underway, and it is the third consecutive northern hemisphere winter that has had one.  This so-called triple-dip event is rather rare.  The only other times they have been recorded over the past 70 years were in 1954-56, 1973-76, and 1998-2001.

La Niñas appear when strong easterly trade winds increase the upwelling of cooler water from the depths of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean near the equator.  This causes large-scale cooling of the ocean surface.  The cooler ocean surface modifies the moisture content of the atmosphere across the Pacific and can cause shifts in the path of jet streams that intensifies rainfall in some places and causes droughts in others.

These weather effects tend to include floods in northern Australia, Indonesia, and southeast Asia and, in contrast, drought in the American southwest.  In North America, cooler and stormier conditions often occur across the Pacific Northwest while the weather becomes warmer across the southern US and northern Mexico.

In the spring, the tropic Pacific essentially resets itself and starts building toward whatever condition will happen in the following winter, be it another La Niña or possibly an El Niño.   For the time being, forecasters expect the current La Niña to persist through February.

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La Niña Times Three

Photo, posted March 10, 2007, courtesy of Gail via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A Room-Temperature Superconductor | Earth Wise

November 18, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

room temperature superconductor

One of the Holy Grails of science has apparently been found:  a room-temperature superconductor.   In a paper recently published in Nature, scientists from the University of Rochester and collaborators announced that they had observed superconductivity at 59 degrees Fahrenheit in an exotic material they produced in the laboratory.

Superconductivity is a phenomenon occurring in certain materials characterized by the total absence of electrical resistance.  Current flowing in a closed loop of superconducting wire can go on forever.  Superconductors have other unique characteristics as well, all of which combine to make them quite useful in a number of applications.  Superconductors are used in high-powered magnets in particle accelerators and in MRI machines.  They continue to be developed for use in electrical power transmission, energy storage, communication filters, magnetic sensors, and more.

The problem with superconductors is that they only work at very low temperatures.  For most of a century – after superconductivity was discovered in 1911 – those temperatures were very close to absolute zero:  459 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.  (In the late 1980s, so-called high-temperature superconductors were discovered.  Those materials superconduct at the temperature of liquid nitrogen:  about 320 degrees below zero).

The dream has been to find a superconductor that works at ambient temperatures.  The Rochester team has produced tiny amounts of a mysterious combination of hydrogen, carbon, and sulfur which, when subjected to extraordinarily high pressures (over 2 million atmospheres), superconducts at the temperature of a pleasant fall day.

 There is no practical value for this first room-temperature superconductor, but it proves that superconductivity can exist at ambient temperature.  Once something is shown to exist at all, there is reason to hope that it can occur in ways that are easier and more practical to attain.

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First room-temperature superconductor excites — and baffles — scientists

Photo, posted June 18, 2013, courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Water-Based Battery

January 3, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/EW-01-03-19-A-Water-Based-Battery.mp3

The transition from fossil fuel-based power plants to clean, renewable energy sources is accelerating as both wind and solar power get cheaper and increasingly become cost-competitive with traditional power sources.   The biggest stumbling block both energy sources face is that they cannot always supply power on demand but require the sun to shine and the wind to blow.

[Read more…] about A Water-Based Battery

A Plane With No Moving Parts

December 11, 2018 By EarthWise 1 Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/EW-12-11-18-A-Plane-With-No-Moving-Parts.mp3

Airplanes have been with us for more than a century and they fly with the help of propellers, turbine blades or fans that noisily move them through the air.  Recently, MIT engineers have built and flown a plane with no moving parts.

[Read more…] about A Plane With No Moving Parts

Rising Seas On The East Coast

June 6, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/EW-06-06-18-Rising-Seas-on-the-East-Coast.mp3

Global sea levels are rising by about a tenth of an inch per year, but in some places, the rise is faster… much faster.  From 2011 to 2015, sea levels rose up to 5 inches – an inch per year – in some locales along the Eastern Seaboard.  Places like Norfolk, Virginia and Miami are experiencing so-called sunny day flooding, something that had not been expected for decades according to climate projections.  So, what is going on?

[Read more…] about Rising Seas On The East Coast

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